Strange Freak Errors in Shipping

[saucysal]

We have been getting in the last couple of days a few orders (out of many) where something very strange has happened to the shipping charges. In the shipping details of the order in Actinic, there are two lines coming up instead of one, showing the weight and shipping charge in both lines (different amounts) and the customer has paid and their order states the total of these two, which is more than they should be paying. I do not know how it is possible for them to have, like, two shipping charges totalled together for one order. Our shipping entries in Settings haven't changed and are fine. Any ideas? Or is it just a freak glitch?

Sarah

[leehack]

Make sure you do not have optimum weight selected so the purchase is being split into 2 or more packages, failing that sounds like a cookie corruption of some kind, would need to be seeing it regularly for it to be a setup issue though i fear.

[Mike Hughes]

Pretty much what Lee says. I'd also check that no Handling charges have crept into your settings and probably do a full refresh just in case the scripts got corrupted.

Mike

[saucysal]

Problem Continues

Thank you Lee and Mike. I have checked the Settings regarding optimum weight and handling charges, and they are as they should be, blank/not applied. I have refreshed the website via Web: Refresh Website. However, I have had another order with the same problem since. In each case it is a customer who has ordered previously. We upgraded to V10 in mid-September. If it is a problem with Saved baskets from V9, you would think it would not take this long for the problem to appear. Any other ideas?

Sarah

[leehack]

Must be to do with saved cookies i suspect, what expiry time for them do you have set?

[saucysal]

Expiry Settings

Hello Lee. I have shopping carts set to 6 hours. I had shopping lists set to 90 days, which I have justed changed to 60 days.

Sarah

[saucysal]

Problem Ongoing

I had Refreshed the website and reduced the shopping list expiration to 60 days. Everything was fine for a couple of days. Then this weekend the error occurred again on 4 orders. I have Refreshed the website again, and reduced the shopping list expiration to 30 days. However, I suspect that this is making no difference, as presumably the expiration date is saved with the cookie on the customer's computer, created at the time of Saving the basket, which may have been up to 90 days ago. I therefore suspect that these errors will continue until 90 days after when I upgraded to V10 in mid-September. Any thoughts? Anybody else had this problem?

Sarah

[Mike Hughes]

If I remember correctly, the cookie on the customers PC identifies the session file that sits on the server.

So, if it is a problem with saved session files then you can always:

1. Delete all session files on the server that are more than a few weeks old.

or

2. If there aren't that many, you might be able to go through them and delete any shipping info they have. (not that easy to do but possible. Just: Change the permissions, download to your PC, edit in a text editor, upload back to the server)

Mike

[saucysal]

Save files?

Thanks Mike. All the Session files have today's date. However, the Save files have various dates. Should I be deleting old Save files? I am obviously anxious to not delete the wrong stuff!

Sarah

[Mike Hughes]

You're right. The session files are used to keep track of active carts and these time out automatically. The save files are where a customer has said they want to save the cart for later.

I think it boils down to judgement call on your part. Deleting the save files will remove any carts your customers have saved. On the other hand, if they're more than a few days old it's unlikely the customer will come back to them. (and they can always recreate them again anyway).

Deleting these should get rid of the problem of double shipping charges IF it's a cart incompatibility between V9 and V10 that's causing them.

I probably would delete the save files (or at least any that are older than your V10 installation) and hopefully that will be the end of it.

Mike

[saucysal]

May be deeper problem

I have looked through the list of Saved files, and all are dated since I did the upgrade to V10. I therefore think the problem may not necessarily be due to the upgrade. What is also concerning me now is that some of the recent errors have been for new customers who have not ordered previously, though it is possible that they saved a basket without ordering previously. I followed your instructions to download one of the Saved files (one dated 21 September) and it contained the products ordered but no line regarding shipping. This also puzzles me.

The nature of our business is that we have a lot (75 per cent) of repeat customers who place orders regularly though not necessarily frequently - once a month or two is common. All the products are literally consumables, and because of the carriage charges and because of the shelf life, they order, say, a month's supply each time, or two month's etc. This is why I had expiry dates on shopping lists originally set to 90 days, which worked fine from 2004 until I upgraded to V10 in mid-September 2010.

I have been studying the products ordered in the faulty orders, trying to find a common element, and checking the products' settings to see if an error had been made with ticking a box to charge extra shipping, but I can find no such error.

Sarah

[Mike Hughes]

There's clearly a problem somewhere but what's causing it isn't obvious.

At this stage I would raise a support request with Actinic and get them to investigate. It might be that they can identify the problem by looking at your database.

Mike

PS. If you look at the orders with the double shipping charge. Is there anything that looks out of place in them? I'm thinking of things like the 'package contents' not having all the items.

[leehack]

Select each of the products in a problem order and thoroughly check the shipping tab for it (select the product in the content tree), make sure nothing has been ticked etc.

[saucysal]

Yes, done that

Thanks Lee. I have done that; I have gone through every item and there is nothing ticked that shouldn't be - there is no extra shipping for any product and no handling charges. This was one of the first things I looked into, and the 2 lines for shipping coming up in the shipping tab of the order suggested that this was the problem. Of the 3 problem orders that I have just downloaded this morning, all are for the same carriage option (Up to 3 Working Days) out of 2 possible options, as has been the case with all the problems to date. This may not mean much as 75 per cent of customers choose this option anyway. The only other common factor between the 3 this morning is that they have all ordered a particular product, amongst others, the Sugarless Chocolate Eclairs, weight of which fits with the shipping lines. For example, one has a line for 76g, £2.17, and a line for 895g, £3.46. The 76g line fits with the Chocolate Eclairs. I have stared at the screen for the details of this product and can find nothing wrong.
Sarah

[TraceyHand]

'ship separately' isn't ticked for those eclairs, is it?